Shutdown Holds Risk for GOP

A new WSJ/NBC News poll explains why government officials are at loggerheads over how to deal with the budget, politics reporter Jonathan Weisman explains.

By

Jonathan Weisman And

Neil King Jr.

Updated April 7, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

With Congress and the White House in marathon talks to try to avoid a government shutdown, Republican lawmakers are caught between the demands of their conservative base insisting they hold their ground on deep budget cuts and the wishes of political independents they will need in the 2012 election who are pressing for compromise, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

Negotiations to avert a shutdown appeared to make progress Wednesday, though a nighttime meeting of congressional leaders and President Barack Obama ended with no agreement. Still, Mr. Obama emerged from the unusual session, held two days before the deadline of midnight Friday, and said the two sides were able to "narrow the issues.''

Pulse of the Poll

The poll of 1,000 adults, conducted March 31 to April 4, illustrated the conflicting messages from the public that underlie the gap between the two political parties as they struggle for a deal to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year.

The poll showed Republicans, especially those aligned with the tea party, ready to fight for budget cuts. Sixty-eight percent of tea party supporters said Republican leaders should stick to their positions on the budget, even if that meant no consensus could be reached. Only 28% advised GOP leaders to compromise. Among all Republicans, 56% called for GOP lawmakers to stick to their positions, while 38% called for compromise.

That kind of pressure has prompted the Republican-led House to approve a bill calling for $61 billion in budget cuts in the current fiscal year, far more than Democratic lawmakers want.

The two parties are stalemated on a plan to fund government operations through Sept. 30, an impasse that would trigger a shutdown if no agreement is reached.

ENLARGE

"The Republican Party had better buck up…and defund programs that are draining the budget," warned Tom Hughes, a 65-year-old retiree in La Paz, Ind., whose household was called as part of the poll. "If they don't, the tea party will replace them. I don't want any compromising," said Mr. Hughes, who tends to vote Republican.

But Republicans find a different opinion among the independents who helped them make gains in 2010 and who they will need again in 2012. Political independents argue for GOP lawmakers to find compromise, 66% to 30%.

When Republicans are combined with independents, forming the universe of people that GOP lawmakers are most eager to appeal to at election time, opinion is evenly split—48% to 47%—between those advising compromises against those urging political leaders to stick to their positions, even if it results in no budget agreement.

"That's a very precarious gap to negotiate," said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster and co-director of the Journal/NBC News poll, who did daily polling for then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich during the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996.

For Democrats, the calculation is more straightforward. By a 71%-to-23% split, Democrats and independents want Democratic leaders to reach a deal. Even the liberal and minority voices that make up the core of the party want their leaders to make the compromises necessary to win a budget agreement.

"If we're going to improve this country, both parties need to compromise to move forward," said poll respondent Shelina Merali, a 40-year-old cardiac nurse and Democrat in Snellville, Ga.

An open question is who the public would blame for a government shutdown—a question surely coloring the decisions of lawmakers as they consider the terms of a budget deal. Initial indications are that the public is divided, but Mr. McInturff and Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster who co-directs the Journal poll, say Americans aren't yet thinking about the issue.

In the Journal poll, 76% said they believed an agreement would be reached to avert a shutdown, a finding that pollsters said reflected a lack of attention by voters, not a sense of optimism. If and when the government shuts down, "it will feel out of the blue," Mr. McInturff said. "This is a country that is not ready."

How the politics play out is anyone's guess, but with 63% of the nation feeling as if the nation is on the wrong track, a shutdown is not likely to be taken in stride, Mr. Hart said. "The last thing [Americans] desire to add to the mix is a government shutdown."

Democratic leaders believe that if they can persuade voters that they have met Republicans half way, they can triumph politically from a showdown that shuts the government.

ENLARGE

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, center, gestured while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday.
Associated Press

"How many folks are married here? When was the last time you just got your way?" President Barack Obama told voters in Pennsylvania Wednesday. "That's not how it works. You have to make compromises." Mr. Obama's approval rating inched up to 49% from 48% in a February poll.

The support for compromise explains why Democratic lawmakers have been portraying tea-party activists as a liability for Republican politicians, rather than a force to be feared.

"The tea party may have helped Republicans get elected, but it's a real hindrance to them governing," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate. "When the hard left or the hard right pull their parties too far from the middle, they suffer, and that's the problem Republicans are facing for the first time in a long while."

Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican and prominent member of the House Tea Party Caucus, said Democrats are "deluded" if they think the movement is waning. "This is broader and deeper than any of the current labels can capture, and, from all I see, it is just getting started," he said.

The Journal/NBC poll suggests there are limits to the tea-party movement's popularity. In the new survey, 29% felt very positive or somewhat positive about the tea party, the same level of positive feeling registered in January.

ENLARGE

But 44% felt negatively toward the movement, and the percentage of Americans who feel very negatively jumped six percentage points from January, to 30%.

Some 25% of those polled said they supported the tea party, down from 29% in February and 30% in November. The highest percentage on record, 67%, said they weren't supporters.

The poll also gave what Mr. McInturff called a "flashing yellow light" to Republicans as they push for big budget cuts in the current year and beyond.

This week, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), flanked by dozens of Republicans, unveiled a fiscal 2012 budget plan that would end Medicare's traditional fee-for-service insurance for those born in 1957 and after in favor of a menu of private insurance plans whose premiums would be partially paid by the government.

But 53% of Americans say Medicare is either pretty much doing well now or is in need of only minor modifications. Among senior citizens, 66% counseled minor changes, at most.

By contrast, when Mr. Obama embarked on a still-controversial effort to overhaul the nation's health-care system in April 2009, 70% favored major reform or a complete overhaul, compared with 44% who say that today about Medicare.

Many House Republicans say the budget brawl highlights how reluctant most Democrats are to confront the country's rising debt load by cutting government spending. They say they speak for a nation tired of federal spending and demanding a smaller, less-intrusive government.

ENLARGE

A Washington protester Wednesday
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

"I don't think the tea-party people are pushing anybody. What they want, and what we are doing, reflects the wishes and desires of the American people," said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas.

Mr. Barton promises to vote against any fiscal 2011 spending deal that falls shy of cutting $61 billion, the level set in the House legislation passed earlier this year and rejected by Democrats as too draconian.

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